Parent-child discrepancies in reports of pre- and early adolescent level of personality functioning

Given the research consensus that personality disorder often onsets in adolescence, more work is needed to investigate parent-child discrepancies in reporting on personality disorder, particularly during the pre- and early adolescent period when more significant impairment in personality functioning may be developing or can already be observed. The current study examined concordance of parent- and child-reported level of personality functioning (LPF, as defined in the DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders) among pre- and early adolescents and examined the extent to which this concordance was associated with clinically relevant outcomes. Participants included N = 432 children between the ages of 10 and 15 years from three samples oversampled for psychopathology symptoms and their parents. Children and their parents reported on child impairment in personality functioning with the Level of Personality Functioning Scale Brief Form 2.0. Outcomes included parent-reported caregiver strain, parent-reported child functional impairment, and child-reported history of thoughts and behaviors related to suicide and non-suicidal self-injury. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify profiles of children based on patterns of convergence and divergence between parent- and child-reported LPF. Profile membership was then used to predict outcomes. A four-profile model, with two parent-child convergent and two parent-child divergent profiles, demonstrated the best fit. Convergence on high impairment in LPF demonstrated the strongest associations with outcomes. Divergent profiles also demonstrated stronger associations with outcomes reported by the informant who had endorsed higher impairment in LPF. Findings suggested that both parent- and child-reported LPF, and the degree of their concordance, may have unique value for predicting clinically important outcomes in pre- and early adolescence. Research and clinical practice utilizing new dimensional approaches with adolescents may therefore benefit from multi-informant assessment of personality functioning.